all that we could do with this emotion
by lecornergirl
Summary: It wasn't anything serious, when it started. A relief of tension, a fleeting moment of pleasure, a mutually agreed-upon distraction from Head duties and four-foot essays and the goddamn war raging outside the castle. OR: friends with benefits is a great idea and there are never any feelings involved, obviously crossposted to AO3 (under lecornergirl)


It wasn't anything serious, when it started. A relief of tension, a fleeting moment of pleasure, a mutually agreed-upon distraction from Head duties and four-foot essays and the goddamn war raging outside the castle.

It started like this: Lily, on the worn-out couch in the Head Students' office, staring into the fire and trying to stretch out a kink in her neck, hand darting to catch the essay on one of the many goblin revolutions she couldn't bring herself to care about that was trying to escape her lap. James, a brief conflict flitting across his features before he stood up from the armchair in the corner and settled on the armrest of the couch, hand coming down on Lily's shoulders.

She turned, ready to tell him off for distracting her, but then his hands set to working out the knots in her shoulders and all thoughts of goblin revolutions fell from her mind. He raised his eyebrows, wordlessly asking permission, and she leaned into him, and the sound that escaped her lips was intended as a sigh but came out closer to a moan instead. A smile played across his face, and he settled into his task.

Some time later – moments, or maybe hours – he spoke up. "Merlin, Evans, you're tense."

She sighed again. "There's a lot going on, if you hadn't noticed."

"I know."

Lily felt bad for snapping, was about to apologise, but was silenced when James's hands stopped moving. Her shoulders were nowhere near unknotted, but she felt better than before he started, so she didn't protest when he came around to sit next to her instead.

"Do you, er. Do you want to talk about it?"

Lily softened, giving James a tired smile.

"No, I – I don't know what I want. I don't want to talk about it, because what is there to talk about? The world is being overrun by murderous racists, and it sucks ass, and we're not allowed to do anything about it, while our friends and families are out there getting decimated, because we're only bloody students." The anger bubbling in Lily was familiar; this was a conversation she'd had many times, with many different people. Never James Potter, though, and in his face she saw understanding, like he felt everything she did and then some. "So no," she concluded. "I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget about it, if just for a minute, so unless you have an idea for that…"

James looked at her with the strangest expression on his face, like he had an idea but didn't think she would like it, and… oh. He must have guessed, from her reaction, that she was on to him, because he immediately started saying something along the lines of "I didn't – I was only joking –" but she cut him off with a hand over his mouth, looked him in the eye, and said "I'm in if you are."

He starts asking if she's sure, but in the handful of seconds since Lily realised what he was proposing, the idea had become the best one she'd ever heard, and so she took matters into her own hands. Matters, here, being James's eternally messy hair, which she slid her hands into and used to pull him towards her.

It wasn't their first kiss, but it was the first one they were both sober for, that they were alone for, that didn't taste of Firewhiskey and sweat and the giddiness of Quidditch after-parties. And, certainly, it was the first one that led further: to James's hand, slowly finding its way up her side. To his lips on her neck, her head falling back as he glanced over her pulse point. To hands tearing at clothing, undoing ties and unbuttoning shirts and pulling off trousers.

In the end, they can't forget that there's a war, that people are dying every day, that the future looks bleak. But they can find comfort in each other, briefly, and remind themselves that happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times.

They'd tell you nothing changes, after that first time, but things always do. They don't make plans for a recurrence, but three days later they're back in the Heads' office, and this time it's James who's angry at the world (and at Potions) and Lily who walks over, fitting her lips against his without a word, sighing contentedly when his hand comes to her waist (and then a little lower). The time after that, no one's really angry at anything, but James cocks an eyebrow at an empty broom closet during their patrol and Lily figures, why the hell not?

Before, Lily wouldn't have known the answer to the question "are you friends with James Potter?" She still doesn't, not really, but friends with benefits seems as good a label for what they do in the Heads' office (and in broom closets, and empty classrooms, and behind that one tapestry on the sixth floor) as any. She starts spending more time with James outside the office, and with James come his friends.

Sirius, the aristocrat-that-was, who has less to say about Lily's appearance than anyone could have predicted. Remus, always on guard, except around Lily, who's done prefect patrols with him for two years and probably knows him best, outside of the Marauders. Peter, who Lily decides must be afraid of girls – or just her – because he doesn't really speak much when she's around, but he doesn't seem to object to her in any major way.

She drags her friends along as well, Mary Macdonald and Marlene McKinnon, and soon it's not uncommon to see all seven of them lounging around the Gryffindor common room, struggling over essays, practicing charms, trying to get their minds around theoretical Transfiguration. Remus and Sirius, wary of displaying their relationship at first, but quickly dissolving into lying on top of each other, or with their limbs wrapped around each other, or at separate ends of the couch but with one's feet in the other's lap, acting like they'll disintegrate if they're not touching. Remus blushes, sometimes, when Lily catches his eye, but makes no move to disentangle or extract himself.

Lily and James, on the other hand, don't show their physical relationship to the world. Rather, they think they don't, but their friends aren't blind: they can see how casual the two are around each other, the mindless touches, the easy affection. Two people don't need to be snogging in hallways to broadcast the fact they share a connection.

And besides, there's nothing less obvious than their detours into closets or the hastily concealed marks on Lily's neck. No one has any doubts about what happened in the back of the History of Magic lesson last week, except maybe Professor Binns, but he's hardly a benchmark, considering he didn't notice his own death.

There's nothing subtle about the glances they sneak when they think the other isn't looking. But no one rushes them; they'll share with the class when they're good and ready.

They don't talk about their arrangement. They talk about everything else in the universe, with their friends and alone in the Heads' office, but they don't talk about their relationship, which is why Lily panics and doesn't know what to say in January when Benjy Fenwick asks her to go to Hogsmeade with him. She's not quite sure how, but she ends up agreeing to go, and Benjy walks away with a smile that could light up the solar system, if not the entire galaxy.

She doesn't know how to tell James – doesn't know if she should tell him, even – but it comes out as soon as she sees him, that same evening in the Heads' office poring over point calculations. He suggests a break, hands immediately finding her hair, and his lips have barely touched hers when she blurts it out. His face closes off immediately, and she can't read it, and he moves backwards, putting physical space between them as well as the emotional distance that hangs apparent in the air.

"I didn't know it was like that," he chokes out, looking at the floor next to her foot.

"Like what?" she asks, but he's already stood up, storming off towards the door. "James, what did you think it was like?" But the door slams on her question, and the echo feels like it's constricting her heart.

She doesn't tell Mary and Marlene why it's just the three of them again, but sees them exchange a glance when she mentions going to Hogsmeade with Benjy Fenwick. They don't press the topic, and neither does she; later, she sees Marlene conferring with Remus and Sirius, throwing a pointed look in her direction.

James doesn't speak to her, except to comment on patrol schedules or point deductions. She wants to ask him what's wrong, but deep down she knows, just like she knew what he meant that first day, and she's not sure she's ready to confront it. She hasn't slept properly since the day Benjy asked her, hasn't touched James since then, and she's not sure which is bothering her more. Hence the whole not ready to confront it thing.

Her blood runs cold every time she thinks of the look of betrayal on James's face, but no sooner does she think betrayal than she's angry again. How dare he? How dare James Potter assume, without a word of indication to her, that they're any sort of exclusive?

She goes to Hogsmeade with Benjy, and it's perfectly nice, but that's all there is to it. They have lunch at the Three Broomsticks, wander around town, and stop at Honeydukes; he tries to hold her hand by the cockroach clusters and she feels nothing, except a longing for stolen moments in offices and empty classrooms. He must sense it, too, because when they get back to the castle he tells her he had a nice time, but doesn't try to kiss her or ask about a second date.

James is waiting for her in the Heads' office, like she knew – hoped? – he would be.

"Enjoy your date?" he asks, and she hears how he tries to be casual but it comes out as anything but. She knows this boy like the back of her hand, and she can't believe she didn't know the answer when Benjy asked her out a week ago.

"No," she says simply, and her heart breaks at the flash of hope she sees in his eyes.

"Well, better luck next time," he says, and turns to leave.

"James." He turns back to her, and his face is closed off again, and her anger returns just like that. "How dare you?"

He gets mad, too, then. "How dare I? How dare _you_! How dare you go on a date with someone else when –"

"When what, James? When I was fucking the Head Boy behind closed doors?" Compared to his outburst, she's quiet fury, the kind that will end the world if she's not careful.

"Is that what you thought?" he's quiet now, resigned, almost… sad. "That we were just fucking behind closed doors?"

"What was I supposed to think? We never talked about it! Benjy asked me if I was free and I had no reason to think we were anything more than friends with benefits!"

"Lily – how could you – you know I –"

"You what, James? You never said! I don't know!"

He'd moved closer while they argued, until his face was inches from hers, and she could see the truth in his eyes but she needed him to say it.

"Why did you say yes to Benjy Fenwick?" he asks instead, his voice barely above a whisper now.

"I didn't think you'd care," she says, and it's not an answer but it's the truth. He starts to speak but she continues, cutting him off. "Fat lot of good that did, because turns out I care, so –"

"Care about Fenwick?" he asks, but they both know the answer.

"Care about you, tosser," she says, and no one has ever looked so delighted at being called a tosser. "Turns out I'm in love with you, who knew?"

The whole school knew, it appears, when they tell their friends the next day. Mary and Marlene give James all kinds of shit for getting all moody instead of just telling Lily he loved her, and no one really buys his excuse of not wanting to scare her off, but they're all too well-acquainted with the incapacitating fear of rejection, and how it gets worse the further gone you are, and everyone has known for years how far gone James Potter is for Lily Evans. Everyone except Lily, that is, but she's been caught up, and for the first time in forever all seven of them – James, the Marauders, Lily, Mary, and Marlene – are all on the same page.


End file.
